A story in PCL Link Dump this week discussed one of the strangest events in music and baseball history - the "anti-disco" riot at Comiskey Park in Chicago. on July 12, 1979. Steve Dahl, a Chicago DJ on WLUP, arranged for a promotion, "Disco Demolition Night" in which fans were to bring their unwanted disco records to that nights double header between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. In return, they would be admitted for 98 cents. The expected crowd was 12,000 but 90,000 showed up. Comiskey Park could only seat 52,000.
Between the games, a pile of disco records was blown up on the field and soon an out of control disturbance developed. The White Sox ended up forfeiting the second game of the double header. This event is cited as the end of the disco era by some, but that's quite a bit overstated.
PCL Link Dump
http://easydreamer.blogspot.com
This is a video of local TV news coverage of the event.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
i find it strange that one could hate a type of music so passionately. i mean i understand, but i guess what's strangest to me is that people would actually go to the extent of organizing something like this.
ReplyDeleteit's funny to me when people nowadays say how awful disco is, when so much of what they listen to is actually heavily influenced by disco.
Yep - it's hard for one thing to imagine an event like this happening now. As you say, disco did influence much of today's music. Every style of music references and draws upon past styles, often in strange ways. I remember hearing some African records form the 1920's that were influenced by American string band records,etc. You comment will lead to several future posts:).
ReplyDelete